Labor loses its way as heartland turns Green

For a symbol of just how far Labor has fallen in NSW, it’s hard to go past the Unity Hall Hotel in Sydney’s inner west. Often described as the birthplace of the Australian Labor Party, it was there 120 years ago in the working class harbour-side suburb of Balmain that one of the first official meetings of the party took place.

But times have changed. On March 26, Balmain is expected to fall to the Greens, delivering that party its first lower house state MP. And such is the Liberal Party’s confidence of a state-wide win, it held a fundraiser at the Unity Hall over the weekend, something unthinkable at this iconic pub just five years ago.

Balmain is not just a story about Labor’s downfall, it is about the continued emergence of the Greens, which is replacing Labor as the left-leaning party of choice in many inner-city seats across the country that have undergone dramatic demographic changes in the past few decades.

“They see in the Greens, the socially progressive, environmentally strong party they hoped Labor would be," says Greens leader
Bob Brown
. “These are people who may have voted Labor all of their life but are fed up. They are very progressive, intelligent, well- informed voters who are prepared to change their vote to get an outcome."

The march of the Greens in NSW comes after the party’s recent success in the federal poll in which they won their first seat in the lower house at a general election and the balance of power in the Senate, due to take effect from mid-year. In the Victorian election the party increased its vote and held onto its three upper house seats. But, while the Greens vote in some key lower house seats rose, the party failed to win a seat, demonstrating the difficulty of breaking through in this arena.

In NSW, the Greens are expected to win both Balmain, held by Education Minister Verity Firth and nearby Marrickville, held by Deputy Premier
Carmel Tebbutt
. For that, they need to achieve swings of 3.7 per cent and 7.5 per cent respectively.

“It’s likely they will win those seats and that will be very significant for the Greens," says election analyst Antony Green.

“This is not the working class heartland it used to be. Balmain’s one of the most affluent electorates in the state. The days when it was a Labor heartland seat were the days when it was full of miners. The last coal mine closed down in the 1940s and they still had shipyards there until the ’70s."

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After 16 years in government and a steady string of salacious scandals and bungled projects, the Keneally government is struggling to hold onto just half its 50 seats in the 93-member lower house.

Labor elders Bob Hawke and Graham Richardson and campaign strategist Bruce Hawker have publicly written off any chance of Labor winning. The refrain at state Labor’s Sussex Street headquarters is that this election is about saving the furniture – hold on to as many seats as possible in the face of what is expected to be a massive anti-government swing.

In a stark admission of pending defeat, Firth is asking people in the seat of Balmain to vote for her so she can be part of a strong opposition to a Coalition government.

“If Labor were to lose, I hope to be part of the renewal," she told The Australian Financial Review. There is no doubt she is a popular local MP but she may struggle to convince people to risk giving her party a fifth term in office.

At the Unity Hall Hotel, people are angry. “Labor has to go," says Ryan, a retired waterside worker.

“They’ve wasted all of this money. They stuffed up the power sell-off. I don’t even like the Liberal Party but this mob has to go."

For public servant Francis and retired teachers Susan and John, the election poses more of a dilemma.

Francine agrees people are angry with the current government but, “I think on the day they will find it hard to vote Liberal for the first time in their lives."

Next door to the pub, with its faded facade and sticky carpet, is the trendy Zumbo Patisserie. Young professionals with their kids waiting in BMWs line up to buy its macaroons, made famous by Adriano Zumbo’s appearances on the popular TV show MasterChef. It is a stark reminder of the demographic changes that have played havoc with the voting patterns in Balmain over recent decades.

In 1988, Labor lost the seat for the first time in more than 80 years to former Olympic swimmer Dawn Fraser. They won it back after just one term but in the last few elections it has been targeted by the Greens and is now a marginal seat.

Former prime minister Paul Keating picked up on the seat’s move away from its working-class roots with the now-famous tag “Balmain basket-weavers" to describe the academics and artistic types who were populating the area in the 1980s. In more recent years, young professionals with double-income households are more likely to have baskets of Zumbo’s macaroons in the back of their expensive cars.

These are some of the voters Greens candidate and local Leichhardt mayor Jamie Parker is hoping to mobilise over the next month.

But Parker says he has also received support from unlikely quarters in the lead-up to this election. Trade unionists who opposed the sale of the state’s electricity, lotteries and waste services businesses have sent him letters of support.

“Some of these people had committed themselves to the Labor Party for decades, but they tell me that what they see today is not the party they joined 30 or 40 years ago," he says.

If local council representation and the federal election are anything to go by, the odds are looking good for Parker and Marrickville mayor Fiona Byrne.

Marrickville partly covers the federal seat of Grayndler – which is held by Tebbutt’s husband, federal Infrastructure Minister
Anthony Albanese
. In the federal election, while Albanese held the seat, there was a 20.6 per cent swing against the ALP. The Greens took nearly 26 per cent of the primary vote with a 7.26 per cent swing to the party.

It was the same federal poll that delivered the long-held Labor seat of Melbourne to the Greens’
Adam Bandt
, making him a powerful member of the independent cross-benchers.

“People know the Greens are now a winnable prospect," Brown says.

“The Greens have shown they can win seats in both houses of parliament and it’s as powerful a vote as it is for the other major parties."

Marrickville Council recently made headlines when it passed a motion to effectively sever all commercial, sporting and cultural links with the state of Israel.

NSW is the next big test for Brown’s party after it failed to build on its federal success at the Victorian election last November.

The Greens were polling 15 per cent ahead of polling day but ended up with just 11 per cent of the vote and no lower house seats.

Brown says the NSW election will be different because of its voting system. Unlike in other states and the federal election, voters in NSW can choose just one party. There is no requirement to fill out preferences if your candidate doesn’t win.

“In Victoria, the Labor Party was successful in getting the Liberal Party to preference the Greens last but that’s not going to happen in NSW," Brown says.

Apart from their chances in the lower house, the Greens could follow in the footsteps of their federal colleagues and end up with the balance of power in the NSW legislative council.

To win a seat in the upper house, a party needs about 4.25 per cent of the vote. In recent Newspoll surveys, the Greens’ primary vote has been as high as 17 per cent, dropping to 15 per cent in the November-December poll. That means it could win an extra one or two seats in the upper house, taking its total to six.

Whether it has the balance of power will depend on how badly Labor does and how many of the votes the Coalition manages to pick up. It will also depend on the results for the other minor parties, the Christian Democrats, the Shooters, Family First and high-profile independent candidate John Hatton.